Here’s Looking At You

Starting a period of watching Film Noir

My daughter is in her first week of her new school year. It will be the last year of something very much like high school. She received her project which will count for most of her grade for arts and culture class. The topic: Film Noir.

The students will do everything. Write the script, make the back grounds, wardrobe, makeup, filming, directing, acting, editing, sounds and whatever else they want or need in there. She’s excited. I’m excited about her being excited.

The group is a little big for all students to work on the same project, according to the teacher. (Which did raise my eyebrows, because that’s a lot of work for a bunch of barely adults. Of course I’m not going to tell the lady how to do her job) So they got split in two. One half is doing a regular Film Noir, the other half is doing a Film Noir parody. My girl is in the parody group.

Of course to do a parody well, you need to be very familiar with the genre. While I like Film Noir just fine, it’s not exactly a genre I have watched a lot. To be honest, the most exposure either of us have had to Film Noir, is playing through Lucas Art’s adventure game Grim Fandango a couple of times.

So aside from fedoras, trench-coats, cigarettes, whiskey, sexy dangerous women and floodlights behind horizontal blind windows, what else does a Film Noir need? I have no clue.

There’s an easy fix though; watching lots and lots of movies in the coming months. Not just watching, observing movies. And I’m going to be observing right there with her. Because I enjoy watching movies, but mostly because those movies will be watched on my computer. It’s going to be fun. Like I said, we’re excited.

If anyone has any have-to-see, perfect-examples-of-the-genre movies to recommend, I’d appreciate it if you left a comment.

No a side note, I am interested to see how this will impact my writing. Surely being exposed to murder, mystery and fatalism for a prolonged period will rub off on me somehow. If my stories are starting to read like a voice-over, you know what’s to blame.